Being on a maternity leave makes you think a lot about your life and what you really would like to do. Turns out we both were thinking in the same direction – we would like to do something with our hands. Something that we could also teach to others. Don’t get us wrong – we love our everyday jobs as a PR consultant and a purchasing manager, but there was still something missing.
Along the discussion about different possibilities it turned out that we both have thought about becoming kitesurfing instructors. Sounds crazy, we know! Of course we realized that it will happen in a distant future as we need to upgrade our skills a lot, but at least we had a goal. But where to start?
It turned out that in Estonia there are not so many possibilities to become an IKO instructor. The nearest courses to us are organized mainly once a year in a surf school called Surftown. So we decided to write them stating our interest in becoming instructors (one day!) and asking for courses to learn everything that was necessary for the IKO Instructor Assistant course – toeside, jibe, jumping, etc. By that time we felt ourselves confident riding downwind-upwind and had made our first occasional jumps of the waves, but that was it. We considered ourselves quite amatours, not to say complete butterfingers!
The owner of the school, Kristiin replied to our e-mail within seconds asking what exactly do we need. If only we knew?! We explained once more that we would like to upgrade our skills to the extent that one day (stressing the part “one day!” as we believed it takes years till we’re ready) we would be eligible for the Assistant Instructor course. She asked to meet us in the beach so that we could discuss our options. Seemed that she actually didn’t know what to do with us 🙂
We went to meet Kristiin with an agenda to agree on some private courses. You know the feeling when you know you would like to do something, but have this enourmous insecurity inside you? That is exactly what we had when walking towards Kristiin’s school. In addition,we had our babies with us. We probably were a weird sight once we arrived at Kristiin’s booth.
And then happened something we never thought of! Kristiin offered that she would take us on as proper trainees. It turned out that Kristiin was tired of giving beginner courses and had thought about taking on some advanced kiters as students (we didn’t consider ourselves as advanced kiters, but oh well!) for freeride lessons. She enthusiastically explained that we would have 1,5h training sessions when the wind allows, video analysis, competitions, etc. She felt that there is a clear lack of female instructors in Estonia and she would love us to do the courses once we are ready and maybe even start working for her.
After agreeing on all the practicalities, we left the beach and in a safe distance started laughing and asked ourselves – what did just happen? We just wanted some private lessons, but ended up with regular kite trainings with the best kitesurfer in Estonia. Wow! We were so excited! And the best part was that Kristiin herself was probably even more excited than ourselves! The feeling “are we really doing this” and excitement followed us for the next couple of days when we were waiting for our first session.
The moral of it all: don’t underestimate the power of will and just do it!
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